Choice of syntactic structure during language production: The production of unbounded dependencies

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Abstract

During language production, conceptual messages are encoded into a target
language and articulated. Existing models of language production assume several
stages of processing including a conceptual level, a level where lexical selection and
syntactic processing occurs and a level where morphological and phonological
features are added ready for production (e.g. Levelt et al., 1999). Previous research
has considered how lexical and syntactic information could be stored via lemma
(Kempen & Huijbers, 1983), syntactic nodes (Levelt at el., 1999) and combinatorial
nodes (Pickering & Braingan, 1998), but little is understood about how syntactic
structures are selected. This thesis examines how constituent structures are selected
by investigating choice of structure in unbounded dependencies such as Which jug
with the red spots is the nun giving the monk? and how this is affected by factors such
as verb-subcategorisation preferences and global sentence structure complexity.
A series of language production experiments investigate how global
structure complexity and verb-subcategoricatisaion preferences affect choice of
syntactic structure at the clause level in unbounded dependencies. A picture
description task reveals an unusual preference for the dispreferred passive voice
structure as a result of global structural complexity. Sentence recall experiments
demonstrate that both global structural complexity and verb-subcategorisation
preferences can affect choice of structure and that competition between these factors
decides the final structure. Finally, syntactic priming experiments show that
processing mechanisms are shared between simple matrix clause structures and
unbounded dependency clause structures, but that the influence of these shared
mechanisms vary between the different structure types. This could be attributed to a
modal of processing where choice of structure is decided by competition between
structure representations which are influenced by different factors in different
global syntactic conditions.
The results suggest that choice of syntactic structure is decided through
competition between possible structures. These possible structures may receive further activation or inhibition from other factors such as global structural
complexity or verb-subcategorisation preferences and thematic fit. Global structural
complexity may influence structure preferences through increased processing load
or through attempts to integrate the clause structure with another global structure.
Thematic role arguments may influence structure through a preference that
syntactic roles fit with specified thematic roles. (e.g. experiencer as subject). This
model assumes parallel processing of possible structures and individual structures
within a complex larger structure. It also assumes an incremental model of
processing which attempts to integrate structures as soon as possible.